Out of the Darkness
by SonicTeamFreeWill
Summary: Tony Stark uncovers Hydra, but he's too late. Fury is down and SHIELD is collapsing. Days later, he gets a call from a dead man who has a team to protect and an agency to rebuild - and he wants the Avengers' help. / Set between s1 & s2. Later chaps: Barton, Banner, Romanov make appearances. Nat meets the Cavalry. FitzSimmons fangirl over Tony & Banner. Adventure.
1. Prologue: Into the Light

**AN ~ My livestream of AOS 2x01 was not working! SO I started this fic instead. It will be canon-divergent as of the end of s1, that is, not necessarily including s2 unless it fits. I will let you know if a chapter contains spoilers for s2. I don't write this genre much/at all so I would love your feedback! Otherwise, enjoy.**

"Sir," Jarvis interjected. "Encrypted message incoming."

"Get onto that would you? It might be just what I need."

Tony frowned at his screens. They were littered with all manner of information; SHIELD, Iraq, Mossad operations, CCTV footage, news channels. None of it seemed to fit together – at least, not in the right way. It was if someone had tipped fifty boxes of puzzle pieces in front of him, and hadn't told him which image he should be building. But worse. Puzzles, he could do - engineer-inventors didn't get this far if they couldn't – which is why it was irking him so much that he couldn't get this one.

"Tony," Pepper scolded, "You didn't come down to eat."

"This is important." He waved her away, but she put the sandwich on the desk in front of him anyway, and frowned at him as he swiped the information into a new arrangement, and back again when he saw no pattern.

"I love that you've got a sense of purpose now, Mr Hero," she said. "But Cap's got this one. You don't need to worry."

He dropped his hands and looked at her.

"Got what one."

Pepper, in response, called up a news feed and expanded it, kicking Tony's collection to the side screen. Tony's eyes widened and he stepped back as helicopters, bullets and explosions lit up the footage. As Pepper had suggested, Steve was pelting along a rooftop at high velocity, with half a dozen people on his heels. But more important to Tony at that particular moment was the rooftop itself.

"Is that-?"

"The Triskellion."

Tony's jaw fell slack.

"Message decode complete," Jarvis chimed in.

"Bring it up," Pepper ordered, as Tony seemed too busy absorbing the bursting of his work bubble. His eyes scanned it. Then scanned it again.

_Out of the darkness, into the light. – Hydra._

"Holy Mother of Cap," Tony finally managed.

"Agent Hill called," Pepper explained. "Fury's down. SHIELD's collapsing in on itself. Nobody knows how far up it goes."

Heart pumping, Core whirring furiously to keep up, Tony leapt into action. Not for the first time, he cursed his messy desk-keeping habits as he dug around for his cell.

"Jarvis – search Hydra. Shield. World War II. Leave out myth. Pepper – when did you find out about this? Have you called Romanov? Does Clint know? Where's Banner?"

Pepper placed his cell into his hand. Her lips were pursed, pretending she was not amused, though her eyes told a different story: as usual, they were of course – no, wait. They were sad. Tony stood upright, slowing, balancing out his movement. He turned to face her properly.

"I couldn't get a hold of Nat," Pepper explained. "Do you think she's okay? She was pretty close to Fury, wasn't she?"

Tony nodded slowly, hoping that he appeared as convinced as he felt when he said, "She's fine. She probably doesn't even know yet. She's probably deep undercover in the Ukraine by now. Something fishy's definitely going on there."

Pepper nodded too, hoping she looked as convinced as she wanted to feel; apart from anything else, Natasha would knock the both of them out and throw them out a window before she heard a word of sympathy from either of them.

"I haven't tried Clint or Banner yet," Pepper continued. "Thor's obviously off the grid."

"What about Coul-" Tony stopped himself before he could finish the name. He cleared. "Hill called, right? Good. Someone's still standing. And Cap's onto it. That's good too. But let's see what we can do to help."

"What do you have in mind?" 

"Is it still called hacking if I made it?"

Pepper's lips curled up in a smile for a moment. "I'll contact Clint and Banner and give our people a heads up."

Tony nodded and Pepper took his phone back, already putting it to her ear as she strode out of the room, leaving him with his screens.


	2. Chapter 1: From the Ashes

**AN ~ Wow, I can't believe the response this has gotten! Thanks for expressing interest! : ) This chapter contains no spoilers for season two but I want to let you know now that I plan to basically use Fitz's canonical condition (at least, before a certain pre-series-2 event). This will come up next chapter and will carry through the story and they always say if you're gonna bail, bail early so I thought I'd give you a heads up.**

**Other than that, I'd love to hear from you including things you want to see (lines you want used, references, characters you want to interact – if it's story-plausible I'd love to make it happen). You're also welcome to correct me *but please try to be nice. Anyway, enjoy!**

**Chapter 1**

As evening fell the next day, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, and Tony Stark flopped back on the lounges of the 37th floor with a deceptively nonchalant air. Tony examined a burn, just cleared of metal fragments, that twisted from his right elbow down to his fingertips. Clint leaned away from a few cracked ribs, while beside him, Bruce slowly bent and flexed his black, blue, bloody knuckles.

Pepper sets drinks before them and sits down, nursing a sore hand – she might have broken a metacarpal firing the quantum blaster, but she wasn't going to tell anybody else that. There were bigger problems.

"So how many divisions are still standing?" she asked.

"About three?" Clint put in skeptically.

"That I can contact," Tony qualified. Clint drew a deep breath and winced at the sting in his ribs. He hadn't expected his cynical estimate to be even in the ballpark of correct.

"I should have seen it," he muttered.

"We all should have," Bruce corrected him. "But we didn't, for whatever reasons, and now we've got to move past that. We've got bigger problems now – like the Fridge." 

"So it's true." Pepper looked to Tony.

"Yeah, as far as I can tell. It started later than the others, but it fell fast. Security footage shows two guys being shot at by a black 'copter, they got in without proper checks, they had a showdown in an elevator and bam. Icebox opened."

"Makes you feel a hell of a lot more confident about who's been allocating power to whom, now, doesn't it?" Banner commented. He shook his head. It wasn't worth getting angry over. Those who had turned had turned. There were new problems to solve.

"I wonder if Fury knew," Clint mused. A collective sigh went around the room, and Pepper reached for the first drink.

As she lifted it from the table, a face appeared that made her squeak in a very undignified manner and drop her glass, sending orange juice and cognac over the screen.

"_What happened? Are we losing them?" _The face looked off-screen, to a colleague, who apparently gave him a negative answer as he came back to speak into the screen again. _"Stark? Pepper? Hello?"_

"Yeah-" Tony attempted to start, still swallowing his shock. "Yeah just give us a sec."

Banner lifted the tray of glasses, and a small windscreen-wiper-like device squeejeed the mimosa off the screen, appearing to filter it off into the body of the table itself. The face of the table then rose into a vertical position, like a television screen that could be watched from both sides. Because the camera was only on one side, the Stark Tower Avengers gathered on Barton and Banner's couch.

"_Barton! Banner! Good to see you," _greeted the man on the screen. "_Honestly, you don't know how good."_

"Oh," Bruce said, "I think we do." He held up his knuckles and Coulson's smile sunk a bit.

"_Maybe you do but the sentiment stands."_

"Get bored being dead or what?" Clint asked.

"_Oh yes, that," _Coulson said, with a smile that suggested it had never slipped his mind at all. _"It's a long story. I'm Director now. I was going to give you the rundown on Hydra but it seems you've had a run-in that's sufficient. Anything I need to catch you up on?"_

"Is Fury really dead?" Clint asked.

"_I'm not at liberty to say."_

The Stark Tower Avengers shared a glance.

"_You didn't hear it from me. And you probably won't be hearing from him for a while either. Where's Cap at?"_

"I couldn't get him," Tony said. "Or Romanov."

"_Hill?"_

"She's the one who gave us the heads up."

"_Good." _Coulson sighed and glanced low for a moment. _"Good," _he repeated a little more wistfully. Then he looked up again, but the wistfulness did not entirely disappear from his tone. _"A headcount's not why I called you. SHIELD's been stripped bare of credentials, of money, of weapons, of people power. I'm afraid your business isn't looking good, Stark. Sorry about that. But my point is, I need your help. Beyond that, I'd rather speak in person. I'm sending each of you some numbers. Together they make up my co-ordinates. How fast can you get here?"_

Pepper, Banner and Clint pulled out their devices. Tony conjured a textbox in the bottom corner of the screen, then eyed the messages the others had received.

"Four hours?" he assessed.

"_Great! See you then."_


	3. Chapter 2: HQ

**AN ~ Sorry I've taken so long! UGH MY EMOTIONS. This show is going to kill me, I swear. I will hopefully have another chapter up tonight so you're your eye out but in the mean time here is**

**Chapter 2**

Even as the ramp lowered, revealing the same man in the same suit with the same irritating half-smile, Tony Stark couldn't quite believe what he'd just seen.

"You're…"

"Not dead?" Coulson finished as Stark stepped off the ramp. "Like I said, it's a long story and I can't tell you most of it."

"But the cards?"

"I know." Coulson's smile dropped, giving way to a haunted expression that betrayed more than the loss of a handful of playing cards. He sighed and turned his head slightly, beckoning someone from the darkness. A tall, solidly built Chinese woman, dressed all in skin-tight black leather and Kevlar, stepped forward. She held a clipboard-sized PDA under one arm, and offered her free hand to be shaken.

"Melinda May," she introduced herself. Clint stepped past Tony to shake her hand.

"The Cavalry?" he wondered. Her eyes flashed steel and she tightened her grip around his hand ever so slightly.

"_Don't_ call me that," she muttered. Clint opened his mouth to apologise – and hopefully slip his hand free the moment the Romanov-esque grip lessened – but May's attention had been captured by another voice, that had spoken at the same time.

"Don't call her that."

Beneath her sharp hairline, and a healing wound, the way May's eyes locked on Banner's made him freeze for a moment. She exuded rage, and it filled the atmosphere like electricity in a lightning storm. Barton's face was starting to pale as her hand squeezed his tighter. Banner made sure his shoulders stayed down, and offered his best peacekeeping smile.

"I'm sorry," he said, holding out a hand, stepping towards her so that she could decide to accept the gesture or not. "I didn't mean to assume anything…I just know how it feels to have reputation precede me."

May's eyes lost their hard edge. She dropped Barton's hand with a nod to let him know all was forgiven, and took Banner's instead. She shook it briefly but tightly, and then shook Stark's too.

"I apologise, Doctor Banner," May said. "Things are a little on edge right now."

"So I hear."

Above them, a light flickered, and a bulb burst.

The semi-assembled Avengers took a moment to absorb their surroundings: a small hanger, inside a brick-and-concrete bunker, underground. It looked like it hadn't been used in a few years: the lights were dim and dusty, the signage worn. It looked like the beginnings of SHIELD - too small, too empty, to be all that was left.

Tony cleared his throat and turned back to Coulson.

"So why are we here, DC?" he asked. "Need help retiling your bathroom?"

"Actually, yes," Coulson said, "but that's not why you're here either. Like I said earlier, we need your resources to dredge up what's left of Shield, and to start a talent search to rebuild. I've got agents waiting to debrief in my office, but first – Stark, Banner, I have a favour to ask."

May took this as her cue to pass the PDA to Coulson and step out of the conversation. She raised an eyebrow at Barton and he followed her up nearby stairs. When the both of them were out of sight, Coulson pulled up a newspaper article on the screen. He enlarged the main image – a shot of two young scientists speaking up a crowd from the SciTech Academy Forum podium - and showed it to the others.

"Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons," Coulson introduced, as Stark took the device from him and skimmed the article. "Heard of them?"

"FitzSimmons?" Tony recalled. He looked up at Coulson over the screen. "They're here?"

Banner frowned. "I'd have thought the Academy would be one of the first places Hydra would try to rope in or cross off."

"They weren't at the Academy," Coulson said. "They were in the field, with me – but Hydra still tried to cross them off. And very nearly succeeded."

"Brave kids," Stark assessed. Banner nodded.

"Hell yeah they are," Coulson agreed. "But now they need guidance. They need inspiration. They need their heroes. Do you think you could spend a few minutes downstairs, have a chat?"

"Sure."

"Yeah."

"Good. Thanks." Coulson reached inside his jacket and pulled out a packet of pretzels. He tossed it to Tony. "Make sure Fitz gets some of those. The kid used to snack like a lion."

"Will do, Boss," Tony said, saluting Coulson with the pretzels. Coulson's face finally seemed to relax a little as he gestured them toward the elevator and disappeared up the stairs after May and Barton.


	4. Chapter 3: Cloaking

**AN ~ Before I get to the waffling part of this AN, Important question: How many of you have not seen any/enough Agents of Shield to know who I am talking about? I don't want to waste time with lots of characterisation if everybody knows what I mean but I know the AOS fandom is way smaller than mainstream Marvel and I don't want anyone to miss out or for the story to be lost on people. The AOS team, especially Fitzsimmons, are big in this fic so it's important. Let me know.**

**Short Waffle: A slightly longer chapter than usual but you guys deserve it because I did promise it to you the other day. Also I had to fix the angst. UGH this show will be the death of me I swear. Just a heads up this is now officially set between season 1 & 2 of AOS. You may notice certain elements of foreshadowing. Sorry about your souls but I just had to. Likes, Reviews & Requests are most welcome, and in the mean time, I'll be over here crying **

**Chapter 3**

Shield Prodigy Jemma Simmons certainly didn't look like she'd been through all that Coulson said she had: her eyes were clear, her hair pristine, her dress neat and her collar crisp. But there were signs. She had to take conscious efforts to keep her arms by her side instead of wrapped around her body, and sometimes, even keeping her head up seemed to take more effort than swimming that 90 feet of water.

When Coulson had buzzed her to collect Stark and Banner, she had found herself relieved for the brief respite from the lab. Now, waiting in the elevator, she wrung her hands and repeated to herself that if she started picking or biting her nails, people would notice. She dug her nails into her skin instead – but only enough to leave indentations that would pass.

The elevator gave a cheerful bing! to announce its arrival on the ground floor, and the doors opened to reveal Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. For a moment, Simmons forgot her worry. A smile lit up her face; she could feel it burning in her cheeks, making her giddy, and it was good. She couldn't remember the last time she'd smiled like that.

"Mr Stark! Mr Banner!" she greeted. "What a pleasure! It's such an honour to finally meet you."

"And you, Doctor Simmons," Banner replied as he and Stark stepped into the elevator. It was a small space, and in the light of what they had just seen and been told, the small, beaming scientist already inside had a strangely large presence.

"Me?" Simmons scoffed and shook his hand. "Nonsense. You're the one who's quadrupled the research available on gamma radiation and technology - and Mr Stark, is it true you created a new element based on your grandfather's map? You really must tell me more about that I mean I know potentiality and all but that's a remarkable achievement and I'd love to hear more about it and I won't tell anyone I swear. Well, not that there's really anyone to tell except -"

Her garbling stopped. She still had her hand wrapped ferociously around Stark's. Her smile flickered like a gaslight flame, her eyes desperately trying to keep her face alight as she swallowed the rest of her sentence and let Tony's hand fall back to his side. She cleared her throat and faced the doors of the elevator as a bing! announced their arrival on the lab floor. The way that Simmons brushed her already-pristine skirt smooth and checked her posture and her hair did not go unnoticed by either of the scientists who followed her into her lab.

She knocked on one of the silver tables.

"Fitz?"

"Hm?"

"They're here."

For a moment, the shoulders remained hunched under their blue cardigan. Then Fitz drew a deep breath, straightening as he turned to catch sight of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner here, right here, in his lab, just a few metres away.

His eyes widened. His jaw slacked.

"Um. I. Hello. I'm – help?"

His hand started to shake. Simmons rushed forward and took the microchip and the tweezers from him, putting them safely on the table as Fitz stepped forward, curling and uncurling his fingers in an effort to keep control of them.

"He's very happy to meet you," Simmons explained. "He's having some trouble with words at the moment. Got a lot on his mind, you know."

That gaslight smile again – but her eyes were gentle and sincere this time, as she hovered behind her partner, watching carefully as Fitz hesitantly approached two of the greatest living minds of his age.

"Doctor Banner. Mr Stark. It's. I'm. Sorry, words." Fitz pinched his nose, screwing up his eyes as he searched his scattered mind. "I'm proud – no, ah…honoured, that's the one. Big, uh…big-" He waved his hand next to his face.

"Always nice to meet a fan," Tony said, offering his hand to shake and smiling as Fitz's face relaxed.

"Especially one as brilliant as you, Doctor Fitz," Banner added. "I'm glad to see my scholarship went to the right man."

Fitz snorted and lowered his eyes, drawing his hand back so that it crossed his body. His fingers worried the material of his cardigan. Bruce opened his mouth to amend his statement – with what, he was not exactly sure – but closed it again when Simmons intervened.

"Don't," she whispered, putting a hand on Fitz's shoulder. "Don't do this, come on. You know he's right." Fitz didn't turn to face her. "If he was right, I wouldn't be stuck."

"Fitz."

"Jemma."

He turned his head, just slightly. It wasn't even enough to lay eyes on her, but she felt the heat of his glare. She dropped her hand from his shoulder as he stalked off toward the back of the room. She stepped in front of him and conjured that inexhaustible smile from the depths of her bone marrow.

"I'm sorry, we're very busy at the moment. We should get back to work. I'm sure Coulson has more important things for you two to be doing than chatting down here with us."

Simmons gave a short, shrill laugh of false nonchalance and touched up her still-perfect hair as she waited for their visitors to leave. Hesitant to rank Coulson's mystery meeting 'more important,' Banner would have refused to leave if it hadn't been for the desperation in Simmons' eyes.

"Come on, Tony," he beckoned.

Stark waved him off with the packet of pretzels. "Fill me in."

Banner glanced at Simmons to check that leaving Tony was okay. She nodded reassuringly, and Banner mimicked her smile in what he hoped was an earnest and supportive way. He had half a mind to call Pepper before Tony said something stupid and insensitive, but as Simmons settled back into her workspace, head bent over her microscope, he realised that Doctor Fitz already had his guardian angel standing by. Banner sighed and pressed the button for the elevator.

Tony Stark, on the other hand, made a bee-line after Fitz, toward the holotable. The design on display seemed to be a computer system of some kind, or perhaps a battery? Stark frowned and stepped closer as the younger scientist – with almost none of his former hesitancy - flipped the containment system over and pulled out one of the chips, enlargening it so that he could see the circuit that ran over it, and flicking the rest of the design away.

Stark pulled it up again.

"Hey!" Fitz turned, about to slap him away before he realised to whom he was speaking.

"Sorry," he mumbled, turning back to and glaring at his work, praying his fingers wouldn't betray his incompetence and frustration with the task. "I don't usually like people – people messing with the, um…but you would…I mean, go."

Fitz sighed. Tony frowned.

"Stuck, huh?" he mused. "Yeah, I see, like it might work on a clear blue sky but there's no way this can really call itself cloaking."

"I know, right?" Fitz nodded. "I think it's the circuitry but every workable configuration I've tried just won't-"

"Translate large scale." Tony nodded thoughtfully and popped open the bag of pretzels.

"It's for the Bus," Fitz explained. "It's a plane. The Bus. It's gotta be go high speed, high altitude, operate convincingly in cloudy conditions and with shielding. Gotta be controllable from the cockpit, too - switchable on and off - but that'll probably be the easier part."

"Got any hard copy designs?"

"Of course."

Fitz all but sprinted back to the desk he'd been sitting at when Stark and Banner had walked in. He had scattered over the surface a number of prototype units, and in the priority rack, what Stark guessed were his newest set of circuit components.

"Right. Let's have a look under the hood." He slid into Fitz' chair and in one hand, used the tweezers to pick up and examine the chip that Fitz had been holding earlier. With the other hand, he held the open snack bag out to Fitz.

"Pretzel?"


	5. Chapter 4: Cracks

**AN ~ Insanely excited for Tuesday. You guys may or may not be getting several chapters of this between now and then because I can't keep my mind off it and I have a quiet few days in terms of school *touch wood***

**Chapter 4**

For a few minutes, Clint Hawkeye Barton and Melinda The-Cavalry May were alone in Coulson's office.

"Take a look around," May said. "The others will be here in a while."

After that, the minutes passed in silence. May leant on the Director's desk with her arms crossed in front of her chest, as Barton picked his way around the room, drifting between the old tech Coulson kept around as it highlighted his fancy.

More and more often, he stole a glance at Melinda May. The way she stared looked familiar: intent but distracted; haunted, but trying to solve a problem. It was different to the steel behind her eyes when she had introduced herself. It was very Nat. Though Nat didn't often let herself get caught in these moments. May seemed to be ignoring Barton's presence, staring blindly at her own boots as the mechanics of her mind set about whatever task she had given herself.

He was trusted, then, Barton assessed. He picked up a pen-radio and turned it over in his hands. Trust meant May knew him – or at least, knew of him, and knew enough of him to know about Natasha Romanov, which meant she knew Nat. Knew Nat closely. And that said a lot.

Just as he teetered on the edge of considering potentially opening his mouth, the door opened, and the grim Director Coulson added his presence to the tangible atmosphere. May didn't quite stand straight at his arrival, Barton noticed, but her eyes lost their cloud. She watched Coulson like…well, like a hawk.

"Sorry for the delay," Coulson said. May stood from the desk and circled like a moon, watching the Director take his seat. He gestured for them to sit, but though Barton moved forward, May hovered closer to the back of the room. Instead, the seat next to Barton was taken by a new face: a young woman, dressed much like May, with a face that was used to smiling but that was not, at present. Barton flashed her a smile and got a mimic back before the young woman turned to Coulson with sharp eyes.

"Who's this?"

"Clint Barton," he said.

"Barton?" the woman repeated, turning to face Clint. Her eyes lit up and ah, ther was that smile. "Clint Barton? Hawkeye? Dude, I saw the footage from New York, that was totally wicked like holy crap I'd kill to shoot like that. Skye, by the way."

"I could teach you something, if you like," Barton offered. "No promises, but if we get time…"

He glanced at the Director, who nodded him toward May. Clint twisted in his seat. May gave him a nod: permission. Beside her, a second door opened and a tall, slender black man in army fatigues entered the room. Immediately, he rolled his eyes.

"Guys come on, the mood's dark enough, I don't need to be blind."

He grinned as he turned the lights on – which was actually a mercy, though Barton hadn't really noticed the dark.

"Antoine Triplett," he introduced, offering his hand for Barton to shake. "My friends call me Trip."

"Clint Barton. Either works."

"Tony Stark and Bruce Banner will be here in a few minutes," Coulson added. Skye and Trip's eyes widened, but the Director leaned forward and drew out some papers, suggesting that conversation was to be moved along.

"We'll move to the holotable when Stark gets here."

Skye interrupted. "Simmons could-"

"Stark."

Barton frowned as Skye sat back in her seat, biting her lip. But the Director was speaking.

"As you can see, our hard copy records are somewhat lacking. This room – what we had on the Bus and in the Playground – are all we have left with immediate access. A few other bases 'round the place are still on our side, but a lot of what they had was destroyed or taken. What remains, we don't want to send digitally until we can strengthen our security, and we don't have the resources to get everything here."

"Surely a few plane tickets, sir?" Trip put in. Coulson sighed.

"Currently we're paying out of pocket for our own food," he confessed. "We don't get government funds any more. SHIELD's assets are frozen. This is bad. I didn't wanna tell you guys how bad but it's been weeks and the recruitment drive isn't going as well as I'd thought."

"Recruitment? How many newbies you got?" Barton raised an eyebrow.

"None."

Of course.

"And you want me to do what exactly? Stark, Banner, they've got money and smarts. Unless you've got a target for me, there's not much I can do."

"Oh, we've got targets." Coulson held one of the papers up so they could see it. It was a photograph of a heavy-set, balding man with the gruff expression typical of a mug shot. The Director opened his mouth to explain who it was, when the back door, the one that Trip had entered through, was flung open with a little more force than necessary.

"We can start with whoever hurt those kids," Banner growled, wringing his hands and furiously, frantically pacing the empty space between the Agents and the door.

"Bruce," Barton warned quietly.

"Woah, man." Trip shifted to the edge of his seat.

Coulson waited and watched. Banner's pacing slowed. He drew a deep breath. When his hands stopped shaking, he spoke again.

"How did this happen. How did we let this happen. Did Fury know? Coulson? _Did Fury know?_"

"Fury saved them," Coulson said. "He's quite possibly the only reason Fitz is even still here. SHIELD stands, Banner, and we stand together. We're good."

"Good," Banner repeated. It was simultaneously, _coz that's all there is left_, and, _you call this good?_ but it let him calm down enough to take the seat that had just been vacated by one of the junior agents, who was headed for the back door.

"Skye," Coulson warned. Leaving her hand on the door, she turned on her heels so that her bangs whirled around her face.

"I don't need to be here," she said with a nonchalance not matched by her eyes. "I've had the briefing. I'm going to the lab."

"No you're not."

"FitzSimmons might need help."

"You're staying."

"Skye," May growled. Skye glared at Coulson, then at May, then back at Coulson. She released the handle in an exaggerated gesture, and backed one, two, three steps away from the door, to perch against the wall where May had been earlier.

"So," Coulson restarted. "The targets."


End file.
